Megumi Unoura: The Romance of the Three Kingdoms Parody Across Time

In April of this year, an anime titled "Ya Boy Kongming!" (Paripi Komei) was broadcast on television and became a bit of a hot topic. Based on the manga of the same name, the story features a bizarre premise: after Zhuge Kongming dies at the Battle of Wuzhang Plains, he is somehow reincarnated in modern-day Shibuya. There, he is moved by the singing voice of the protagonist, Eiko Tsukimi, and begins to serve her as his new lord. The main focus of the story is Eiko's growth as a singer and Kongming's skill as her strategist (producer) supporting her. While it can be enjoyed without knowing the world of the Three Kingdoms, the plot is peppered with Three Kingdoms references—from Kongming's strategies and dialogue to the names of the characters—making it undoubtedly even more entertaining for fans of the original history.

Parodies of the Three Kingdoms like "Ya Boy Kongming!" are countless, but Japanese people taking liberties with the story is not limited to the modern era. It seems that people in the Edo period also fully enjoyed playing around with the world of the Three Kingdoms.

For example, there is a work titled "Sangokushi" (written with characters meaning "Praising the Ultimate History") published during the Kansei era (1789–1801) in the sharebon genre. Sharebon is a type of literature focused on the pleasure quarters that was popular in Edo. In this work, Liu Bei has retired and left the state of Shu to Kongming, and is visited by Sun Quan and Cao Cao. Although the setting is nominally Three Kingdoms-era China, their conversation revolves around "refined" topics typical of sharebon, such as calligraphy, paintings, and sweets popular in Edo, which is quite humorous. There are plenty of topics related to the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms," such as asking, "Is it true that Kongming prayed for that wind (at the Battle of Red Cliffs)?" but in true sharebon fashion, most are rewritten into comical episodes. However, some jokes are so sophisticated that they wouldn't be understood without having read the original deeply, and there are even meta-lines like "No one is as favored as Liu Bei," suggesting that the readership included quite a few Three Kingdoms enthusiasts.

In "Sangokushi," Liu Bei speaks in an Edo dialect, saying things like "Omoshiro tanuki no haratsuzumi" (The amusing raccoon dog drums its belly), but there is fundamentally no difference between that and Kongming's line "It's party time!!" in "Ya Boy Kongming!" in terms of the underlying spirit of parody. If a person from Edo who read "Sangokushi" were reincarnated in the present day, they could surely spend the whole night talking about the Three Kingdoms and would likely get excited watching "Ya Boy Kongming!" together. It wouldn't be surprising if a work with such a premise appeared someday. I can't help but feel once again the sheer depth and versatility of the Three Kingdoms as a cultural phenomenon.